Instagram Hackers Get Fruity with Diet Spam

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Users of the photo-sharing smartphone app Instagram reported
being hit with a barrage of posts featuring images of strange
fruit and touting their "miracle" health benefits on Saturday
(June 29).

The posts, which came from compromised accounts, were actually
part of a spam campaign.

The attack, first reported by tech blog GigaOM, took over legitimate
Instagram accounts to inundate followers with marketing
messages and images of eccentric fruits. The spammers also
changed the link in users' profiles to a bit.ly shortened URL
that led to a bogus BBC News page.

It's still not clear how, exactly, the accounts were compromised
or who, in particular, was behind the attack. GigaOM noted that
the bit.ly link was created on June 23 and had racked up more
than 32,000 clicks by Saturday.

Soon after the first wave of fruit hijacks was reported,
Instagram confirmed the problem. The company said it was working
on
resetting passwords on the compromised accounts and deleting
unauthorized images.

"Earlier today, a small portion of our users experienced a spam
incident where unwanted photos were posted from their accounts,"
Instagram said in a prepared statement to journalists who
inquired. "Our security and spam team quickly took actions to
secure the accounts involved, and the posted photos are being
deleted."

For the most part, affected Instagrammers took the security
breach in stride, taking to Twitter to alleviate the situation
with irony and humor.

"It's sad and funny that my sister knew my Instagram was hacked
because I posted a pic of fruit and the caption was about my
healthy diet," tweeted makeup artist Amy Chance, as linked to from The Next Web.